The Cold Barrow
by mattressdemon
Summary: The inquisitor is left reeling in the aftermath of Corypheus' defeat, and is foolish to think she might have a few minutes to breath and piece together a way forward. She has her own puzzles to solve, her own answers to find, her own wounds to sew. Inquisitor/Solas.
1. A Chill Below - Prologue

**Prologue**

_A Chill Below; The Cold Barrow_

Wind lashed at her skin like pelting fires of ice, venomous fangs of snowflakes pelting her face. She wasn't sure she could feel her toes anymore, and the howling of the wind was arguing with the chattering of her bones beneath her flesh. Her hands couldn't cling tight enough to her shoulders, couldn't stop the cold that seeped from every conceivable angle. She grit her teeth. The stars and a full moon lit the snow as an ethereal ghost, guiding her as much as losing her in the vastness. She had no room to question her inner sense of direction; if she were wrong, she was dead, and death was an ultimatum she could not accept. Somewhere in the distance, a howl haunted her, traveling miles it to cradle the curves of her pointed ears.

There is so much snow, so much wind, an endless story of the same old villain, that when she saw movement, she almost didn't comprehend it. Her eyes attempt to capture the sight, but whatever it was was gone, in the distant, endless snows, she cannot find. She swayed, balance almost lost due to pure frigidness, but she coiled her courage taunt around her ribs and forced the rope to pull her limbs, and promised herself that even if she had to keep doing it every few minutes, she would. The snow crunched beneath her boots, and the movement again – accompanied by a lone howl. She snapped her vision aside, just in time to see the end of whiteness disappearing behind a snowy mound.

It was her luck that a wolf would be following her. She felt a bitter chuckle try to escape her throat and suppressed it, tried to keep her mind from wandering. Even as she told herself to stop, she lamented her mark, lamented that she had been sent to the conclave, that she had been the first, that she had been born with magic in her blood, that her father hadn't wanted her, that – "Enough!"

Her shout thundered over the hills, and a howl that crippled her soul with astonishing empathy responded. She had to stop, had to put her hands on her knees, had to catch her breath. Had to contain her waves of emotions under the cool, calm exterior she ever exerted, before her exterior became so cool she could no longer draw breath. The wolf was not capable of empathy towards her, she knew. Her imagination was running wild with details out here, alone, shivering and cold, perhaps on the very last of her grains of sand.

She forced herself to stand, told herself that not all trees grew straight but they all reached towards the sun. Hadn't she said that once – to Blackwall? In another life, in another time – she was struck nearly dumb by the sensation that settled on her then. She had no choice but to look at her iced fingers and dry palms, demanding answers to why she felt so strongly she knew this path, that she had been here before. Her eyes were alight like newborn stars as they searched around, another crunch of snow beneath her feet, and then another. From stop to run did she turn, trying to outrun this déjà vu, this wolf following her, hunting her.

She catches a sight of the white wolf in the distance, too far to discern details. It was running, too, now. Always parallel, never behind, never before. It was on her time, but her time was wrong, and she could only run, trying to find the right time, trying to find her time, not his time, not this one that demanded she stay. Her will pushed and heaved at her heart and her feet propelled like driven machines, the graceful last dance her mind declared to her, and she made a disgusted noise at herself.

She snapped her eyes forward before she stumbled, before the wolf stole her attention and sucked her life away, and all she saw was blackness and six yellow eyes, all she smelt was blood, all she heard was her own scream.


	2. Walls

**Walls**

As the breach Corypheus had just ripped up was taunted and sucked and pulled, sewed shut by her hand, she could feel the wind dancing on her, her dark hair tickling her cheeks. She snapped her hand away with all the force she could muster, stumbling and panting. She could hear footsteps to the side, and if it was not friend, she surely would be dead within moments. It took several moments to recover enough to see Solas going to his knees, the mourning for the broken orb he touched now comparable to the sorrow she remembered on his face the night he'd brought the world down on her.

"I'm sorry." She heard her voice before she even knew she'd spoken.

"It's… not your fault."

"I know you wanted the orb." It's like he hadn't even spoken, and Hekate tasted something metallic as she took a few steps towards him, watched him cradle the uneven half of the orb in his hands. "I didn't mean for it to get destroyed."

He reverently set the half down, "It's not your fault, Hekate."

"I-I…"

"Inquisitor!" Cassandra's voice rang like a beacon through the stone. Hekate resisted, flinching towards the voice, but her eyes remained on Solas as he stood. His melancholy was infectious, even here, even now, in the very recent aftermath of victory. "Solas, I…"

To his credit, he waited several moments for Hekate to try to find her words. There was precious little patience, she knew, and she was grateful for it, angrier at herself that she could not find the right way to say the things she felt so very strongly.

"No matter what happens… know what we had was real." Solas consoled, and Hekate felt her ribs curl protectively around her lungs and heart.

"Inquisitor, are you alive!?"

"I… just, just a moment." Hekate managed to stutter, before turning to reassure her friends. The sound of her boots clicking on the stone, every step taking her further from him, put dread pin by pin into the cushion of her heart, and she rounded the corner, stepping down several steps to see soldiers and her closest allies. She glanced back, just for a moment – she needed to see him there, make sure that _now _she would get answers. He stood still at the top of the stairs, and he tried on a smile for her that did not reach his eyes.

Cassandra, at the forefront, had never crashed her face with such an expression of relief in her life that Hekate had seen. "You yet live."

"I suppose it will have to do." Hekate's thick upper lip curled over her teeth, and Cassandra shook her head, her expressive brows coming down in the center.

"It will more than do!" She retorted sharply, and Hekate felt, _finally,_ a slap of relief across her being, one that made her shoulders sag and allowed her to release a breath she did not even realize she clung so tightly to.

She could not stop herself – she wanted to return a smile to Solas now, wanted to promise that things could be alright, that they would be – but when her eyes sought the sight of him behind her once more, up on those stairs, he was gone.

"What do we do now?" Blackwall's voice was a texture that complimented the night, one she realized she sorely wanted to hear. In fact, she could really go for hearing just about _everyone's _voices right, knowing that they were alive, that they were okay. Now was not the time to pine like a little girl over her Solas wandering away.

She steadied herself on her feet, steeled her heart and hardened her jaw. "We go back to the Skyhold."

She made her way down the stairs, and helped Cassandra and the others organize themselves. Cassandra was briefing a messenger to return to Skyhold. It would not take them long to return, and Hekate waited until Cassandra and the others were preparing for the journey back before Hekate tried to sneak her way up the stairs to try to find Solas. She expected that he would be there, with the orb, or with a book, or _something_.

He was not.

Hekate felt her feet carrying her to the remains of the orb, but she didn't know what for. Solas would not have left it had it contained anything further of value. She found herself picking up the bones of the power Corypheus had mysteriously obtained, the shell of what once was. Like something more important than the remains it was, she carried it back, her eyes only on it. She struggled with herself – when did she not? – for she knew, now, very suddenly, that Solas was gone, that he had just _left_. He left her to fight this alone inside, and then he left her alone to this world.

It was Varric whose eyes were searching for her in her absence, it was Varric who eyed the remains of the orb in her arms and she needed only glance at him to see that he _knew _she had gone up there looking for Solas, and he _knew _she had found nothing. There was Varric, one of her closest friends, with that so familiar compassion in his eyes, and she felt him speak more than she heard it.

"Hekate… You look like you're carrying a stone child."

"He doesn't look like you, Varric. You're not the father." Hekate chided.

Varric snorted and laugh, waving her off. His voice suggested he knew the answer to the question he was about to pose. "Chuckles?"

"Gone." Hekate confirmed nonchalantly, her eyes on the orb, and ignoring the expression that fitted its way onto Varric's features. He had never quite approved of her keen ability to mask her emotions and speak so casually about things that were slaughtering her inside. Cassandra's eyes grazed over them; Hekate knew she'd taken that information in, saw her turn back to the messenger.

"Our spymistress will probably send out scouts to find him for you." Varric comforted, though there was an edge of uncertainty to his tone Hekate could not place. She watched as the messenger saluted Cassandra, and headed off in a jog.

"If he wants to go, what right do I have to try to drag him back? He did as he said. He helped us deal with Corypheus, and now he is gone." Hekate's pale green eyes slid up to Varric, who could only throw her a frown at that.

"_All_ that he said?"

"I'm not going to _force _him to explain why I deserved to have him hop up and down on my ribcage if he thinks what we had did not deserve the explanation."

"I don't think that for one minute, Ivy. He cared about you a great deal."

"A great deal." Hekate heard herself repeat the words, heard the bitterness, but tried to brush it off and ignore it like an unruly child. She shook her head, "Whatever he does, Varric, I want it to be genuine. I begged once, only because he caught me so entirely off guard. I won't _ever _do that again."

"The messenger runs faster." Varric chuckled, and Hekate sighed, shrugging her shoulders and allowing him a single nod of agreement.

"You should clean Bianca up and find what you can. We're to leave soon."

"Roger, Ivy." Varric took his dismissal in stride, turning to leave Hekate with her thoughts. She crossed her arms, a tinge of regret at the realization striking through her like static. Far too soon she found her feet carrying her away with the others, away from where she last saw him. How many times had she looked at him, only to find him already watching her? Would that be the last time? The last time she saw him at all, let alone the last time he looked at her like that?

It was hard to forget the _first _time he had looked at her, just after he had shown her how to close the first little rift she'd ever seen. She shook her head, and managed only to focus on her feet and breathing for scarce a minute before she felt dread crumble into bits and pieces and float about in the ocean of her chest, reminded that she would be going to Skyhold, and he would not be there.

It had been Solas who had shown her Skyhold, and it had been Solas who first brought her inside the frozen halls of the fortress. The rest of the contingent was still seeking solace in the trails that saved them from Haven, and Solace brought her, and her alone, to a fortress that she feared might speak in a boom voice any moment for all the ghosts upon the walls. She remembered the cold stone beneath her finger tips, stepping over the debris inside.

"It is suitable for our needs."

"It is… beyond suitable, Solas." Her voice was just a breath of awe, her eyes on the great heights of the fortress. She tugged them back to the elf behind her, his hands on his staff, leaning on it. He had that slight grin on his face, and she crossed her arms in an effort to shield herself from the charm and playfulness of it. "What?"

"I am simply enjoying watching you."

"Watching me gobble this up like a bouquet of flowers? Or sweet rolls. Oh, I want a sweet roll, now." Her lips tugged down, and she put a hand over her mouth, trying to mask the pout that had forced its way onto her lips. She watched Solas chuckle at her, and she flushed. "I say the silliest things." It was as close to an apology as she could rally, and she heard him chuckle again, for her eyes were avoiding him now.

"Do not worry, lethallan." She could not help but notice that his voice rocked on the edges of amusement, despite the comforting words.

"I never worry." She sniffed, holding her chin up, and he did laugh now.

"You are a haughty painting of a stag itself." He declared, and when she glanced to him, she nearly jumped out of her skin. He was much closer now, and she flinched again at his smirk, her eyes shooting to his feet to escape it.

"Perhaps you could wear boots, so that I might hear you approach." She tried not to roll her eyes as he laughed at her suggestion.

"I'm quite comfortable." He assured her.

"I would hope. Snow is cold, you know. You do know, right?"

He chuckled, "Indeed. You were so curious before, have you run out of questions now?"

"I'm… just distracted." She admitted, her arms coming loose of the cross to fall limply at her sides, her gaze surveying again the throne room of the Skyhold. "It's… beautiful. I almost fear to put people in it. There are ghosts on the walls."

"It deserves this. A purpose again." Solas offered, and Hekate glanced back to him, considering him. He was not looking at her now, but rather, out the great window in the back.

"A reason to fight, like us all."

"Yes." He smiled at her, his eyes going back to her. "We should inform your advisors and Cassandra?"

Hekate hesitated, their eyes meeting, a silent bet, but Solas was patient, and she gave in before he did with a nod of her head. "Yes. Let's go."

"Inquisitor?"

Hekate felt like she'd hit her face on a branch, blinking and looking to the familiar voice of Vivienne by her side. "I… I'm sorry. I was lost in thought."

"I suspected as much. I simply wished to congratulate you on the victory. We will have more time to speak when we reach Skyhold, but it is important that your mind stays current and fresh."

Vivienne's smile was ever warming to Hekate, and she bowed just slightly at Vivienne. "My thanks."

"Of course, darling."

Vivienne fell back then, letting Hekate refocus. There are some battles Hekate must commit to alone, and one such as _focusing _on making it to Skyhold in one piece was not as simple as it might appear. They could watch together, make it together, but Hekate was alone to combat her innermost demons.


End file.
